1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an endoscope apparatus which can illuminate a space to be inspected and an illuminating apparatus for an endoscope.
2. Description of the Related Art
An endoscope apparatus has been widely used for observing inside of a living body and a machine. As a light source for the endoscope apparatus, a lamp with relatively large power consumption such as a halogen lamp, a xenon lamp and a metal halide lamp has been used. Recently, an endoscope apparatus has been developed using a semiconductor light-emitting device with low power consumption such as a light emitting diode (LED) and a laser diode (LD) as a light source. For example, an endoscope apparatus for fluorescent observation using an LD as a light source is proposed in Japanese Patent No. 3194660. Also, an endoscope apparatus for transmitting laser light from the LD to a fluorescent member provided at a tip-end section by an optical fiber and illuminating inside the space to be inspected with white light converted by the fluorescent member from the light is proposed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2005-205195.